Assignment Content

Assignment Content

Running head: ARREST-RELATED DEATHS 1

ARREST- RELATED DEATHS 3

Arrest-related Deaths

Stephanie Arreola

University of Phoenix

Marty Mendenhall

03/31/2021

Arrest- Related death (ARD)

ARD (Arrest-Related death) is an element of MCI (Mortality in correctional institution) and is one of the national censuses for all Arrest-Related deaths. Arrest-Related deaths involve deaths of civilians that happen after or during a restraint process or an arrest involving law enforcement personnel and the ordinary civilian. It includes all adults or juvenile’s death whether Criminal suspects or a non-criminal individual that occurs due to an interaction with law enforcement officers at local or state level.

The bureau of justice statistics (BJS) refers to the term arrest-related to actually include all deaths of civilians that occurred due to reasons such as self-imposed deaths like accidents, suicides and intoxications (Hattis 2020). It also refers to the deaths that happen when law enforcement personnel at local or state levels are involved or when a civilian sustains injuries while in custody or when trying to flee from the law enforcer. Some illness and medical conditions are also referred as arrest related by the BJS.

Bureau of justice statistics implemented the arrest-related deaths program in the year 2003 but as part of the DCRP (Death in custody reporting Program). BJS uses the ARD program to define a wide range of situations that pertain an arrest and has no limitation on the information that traditional notions that law enforcement personnel uses excessive force.

The program also excludes 4 groups of general situations such as death by vehicular pursuits with an indirect police action, wanted criminal suspects whose deaths occurred before any law enforcement personnel contact, the death of an agent of law enforcement and the deaths of hostages and bystanders.

The program also uses a variety of techniques to identify any deaths that are arrest-related. These techniques include SRC arrest technique that engages in gauging law enforcement agencies, through open source pursuit of media, as well as mining the information collection that is already in existence.

Personally, I chose the arrest-related death topic because it has always been linked with police practices, drug abuse or deliriums and most often there is always inadequate or insufficient observations and surveillance of the available information. Arrest-related deaths are something that affects us every day globally and most of these death events are not put in the limelight and not given the deserved attention (Winfree & Mays, 2019). No civilian should die during an arrest by the law enforcement personnel like in the recent case of George Floyd who died during an arrest (Barker, 2020). It is my topic of interest because I want to know more about why these death events happen when they shouldn’t. Civilians now feel more scared of an actual arrest. It is an unfair event if someone dies not because they are guilty but just criminal suspects who deserve and have rights to a fair representation at the court of law. And most cases, these arrest-related deaths especially where the law enforcement personnel are involved go unpunished.

Why should the police or people going to do the arrest kill the suspect? This is the research question to this topic. In law everyone is innocent until they are proven guilty. It is only the court of law that can prove one to be either innocent or guilty. And if guilty it is not a must that they are sentenced to death, in most cases they are sentenced to a jail term. This means that there is no reason as to why anyone should be killed during an arrest. Those doing this should be charged with murder.

The hypothesis developed is to quantify the underreporting of the deaths that are related to law enforcement in the united states. This is not only about deaths but injuries as well, from the previous research that have been done before, those that have been recorded are actually less than the cases that have been reported. This is a prove that not much is being done on this to an extent that people have gone to recording it for themselves just like the George Floyd case; had it not been recorded by a stranger who was passing by then maybe no one could have known about it. These cases don’t need to be undercounted, this is against human rights and the police need to know this, they need to be told that people are aware of what has been going on and that they need to improve on it.

References

Arrest-related deaths program: Pilot study of redesigned survey methodology. (2019).

Barker, T. (2020). Law enforcement-perpetrated homicides: Accidents to murder.

Hattis, S. H. (2020). Crime in the United States 2020.

Winfree, L. T., & Mays, G. L. (2019). Introduction to criminal justice: The essentials. Aspen Publishers.